


Kiss you where it's sore

by orphan_account



Category: Harry Potter - Rowling
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-02-23
Updated: 2010-02-23
Packaged: 2017-10-07 11:58:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,760
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/64953
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What they all needed, maybe, in the end.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Kiss you where it's sore

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Snakeling in the Harry Holidays exchange on livejournal 2008](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=Snakeling+in+the+Harry+Holidays+exchange+on+livejournal+2008).



> Written post Deathly Hallows, epilogue compliant.

Harry walked down the corridor to the Department of Mysteries with a strong sense of foreboding. His leg ached where Ginny had accidently knocked him sideways into the oak dresser in their bedroom the night before, and he leaned self-consciously on his cane. It was the new cane his granddaughter had insisted on buying for him. He'd protested loudly, but Ginny shushed him, grinning, and pointed out that they all knew he loved the attention. After fifty years she could see straight through him and out the other side.

He'd fallen to the floor and grunted with pain. Ginny was there in a flash, bending over him in the fussy nightdress she insisted on wearing these days, and flicking her wand over his old injury, easing the pain.

_I'm sorry,_ she'd said, curving her hand through his thinning white hair and giving him a rueful smile.

He'd grinned up at her, light headed with the spell, and pulled her face to his.

The corridor was dank and dark. It was years since he'd been here, and bad memories still lingered in the corners, in the shadowed doorways.

It had taken the wizarding world a long time to learn that dark magic goes hand in hand with the light. After Voldemort's death, after Snape - Harry faltered, leaning one hand against the wall - even Snape's painful life and death had not been enough to prove that nothing is black and white. At first they'd tried to drive away all the darkness, but it only came back stronger, encroaching on the light.

Here was proof they'd learned in the end. The place was unchanged, and left to itself the stone walls had subsided. Dust filled the cracks, spiders crawled along the ceiling, lichen grew on the stone floor under Harry's feet. He could hear dark magic whispering to him; feel it snaking around his feet as he walked, a sigh of impossible power, of things he'd learned not to want.

He'd learned a lot in the long years following Voldemort's death. He'd learned how to love, and how to be satisfied, and how to forget.

He stopped at the heavy door outside room 182. The dust on the brass knob was streaked with fresh fingermarks. Malfoy must be waiting inside.

~

_Three years after the war._

Harry found Malfoy lying in the street outside Madam Malkin's at two in the morning. He was shored up against the doorstep of the shop like a bundle of rags and sticks the wind had blown for miles. Harry thought at first he was an old drunk he'd seen before and taken home for a meal and a good night's sleep, only to wake to find his wallet missing. Sighing, he braced his thigh against the old guy and heaved, throwing an arm around his back and hauling him to his feet. The man hung against him like a sack of bones.

"Hey." Harry nudged him gently. "Let's get moving. It's too cold out here."

He reached a hand under the sparsely bearded chin and tugged the face towards his. Only then did he notice the dirty blonde hair; shorn to a finger's width, the fair skin marbled with bruises and dried blood, and the deep strain on the familiar pinched face.

Malfoy's eyes were blank. He opened his cracked lips and dragged in a cold breath. Harry stared at him, shock washing through his body. Malfoy's eyes fell shut, and his weight sagged, making Harry stagger against the door of the shop. He thought about laying Malfoy down, covering him with his own cloak and walking away. But a bitter wind blew through the alley carrying the first flakes of snow. It stung Harry's eyes and lifted the rags around Malfoy's feet. He'd be dead by morning.

Three days earlier The Daily Prophet had been full of nothing but his release.

~

An hour later Malfoy lay unconscious on Harry's old couch. It crouched in a pool of yellow light against the concrete wall at one end of his warehouse. Harry stood in the kitchenette, opening a can of soup. He poured it into a pot and lit the gas with his wand, glancing over at Malfoy. He was wearing layers of greying torn clothes, none of them thick enough to warm an animal. One arm was thrown over his head, and under the fresh bruises Harry could see a pattern of older scars. He shuddered and leaned against the kitchen bench, pressed the heels of his hands into his closed eyes. Azkaban.

A few minutes later he poured the soup into a bowl, cast a charm to keep it warm, picked up a spoon, and carried them both to the low table in front of the couch. Malfoy was still out cold, but there was a rise and fall under the rags covering his chest. Harry covered him with a rug, making sure to tuck it in around his bare feet, and went to run a bath in the corner of the warehouse.

When the bath was full and hot he placed a homemade wooden screen around it, cast another charm to preserve the heat, dropped a towel, some warm clothes and a pair of sneakers on the floor, and went back to work.

He picked up his plane and started in on the piece of petrified swamp kauri he'd bought. It was beautiful - the grain a warm tide of brown, burnt caramel and gold. It should probably be returned to where it came from, but Harry couldn't bear to give something so beautiful away.

He fell into the rhythm of work, and around him time slid slowly from the no man's land of the witching hour into dawn. Pale light transformed the warehouse, fading the lamps, creeping across the wooden floor and revealing half built sculptures, twisted concoctions of metal and wood and stone. Harry felt the light slide onto his back, and his hands stilled on the wood. He looked up and saw the winter sun splashing in the rows of glass skylights on the roof.

He rolled his shoulders to loosen them. He turned to look over at the couch, and his breath caught in his throat. Malfoy was standing behind him, leaning on a pillar. He was watching Harry, his eyes clear and cold. Harry's gift of clothes hung from his meager frame, and his clean skin looked white against the stark bruises on his face.

Harry felt trapped in his gaze. Malfoy looked so sick, so worn, so underfed. Deep lines traced his eyes and mouth, and his bone-thin wrists hung from the shirt.

Malfoy opened his mouth to speak. "Potter-" he began, and his voice cracked on the word. Harry waited, but after a moment Malfoy turned away and half walked, half limped, to the big double doors of the warehouse. He stopped in front of them.

Harry hesitated, unsure of whether he should even let Malfoy go. But he knew what he'd want if it was him - to be able to decide for himself - so he walked over and unlocked the doors, dragging one open. Malfoy started through the door, and Harry caught his arm. He took his winter coat from its peg by the wall and held it out. Malfoy's mouth pressed to a thin line, but he took the coat. His cold fingers touched Harry's, and then he was gone.

Harry washed the soup bowl in the sink even though it had been scraped clean. He folded up the screens around the bath and leaned them against the wall. Malfoy had left the bath clean and empty, the plug resting on its rim, the towel folded neatly over the side.

Harry couldn't find the energy to work. The day passed in a blur while he lay on his camp bed and half slept, half watched the cold sun cross the sky window by window above him. That night he went out again, roaming through the streets as night rained around him. He told himself he wasn't looking for Malfoy.

He avoided Ron and Hermione's owled attempts to arrange a get together with Ginny, saying he was working too much. He avoided Mrs. Weasley's more direct approach of knocking on his door by pretending he wasn't home.

A few days later he picked up Malfoy's towel to throw it into the wash. It opened out and Harry saw the bloodstains Malfoy had hidden under the folds. A month after that he found the rags Malfoy had worn balled up and pushed down between the bath and the concrete wall. He pulled them out. They were heavy with water and mildew. He weighed them in his hand for a moment, and then stuffed them back down where they belonged.

~

When Harry felt himself begin to disintegrate all that held him together was work. The pieces of wood, or iron, or glass he touched stole all his attention. The substance under his hands could become his whole world for one hour, or ten hours, or as long as he needed.

His world had been split in two more times than he thought was fair. Like a row of lights leading back into his past were the moments he counted time from. He could count time forwards or backwards from them but never through, because nothing either side ever joined up. There was no cause and effect; only an irrevocable split and no way back to innocence.

One of the lights was the death of his parents. One was arriving at Hogwarts. One killing Voldemort. One helping Dumbledore kill himself.

One of the lights was Snape. A memory of being held above a dying body, above eyes dark with knowledge, a mouth full of sharp words. But Snape had given him his memories, Snape had said, _look at me,_ in a voice so quiet it was breath on Harry's cold skin, in a voice so gentle that time had stopped and begun.

~

A few months after Voldemort's death Harry had taken some money and left. He left all the happiness and all the grief and all the understanding, and he wandered through the Muggle world and felt light and free and careless. One day he walked into an art gallery in Germany and idly looked at a picture here, a sculpture there, until he came to a great white room.

Inside the room, a foot off the floor, had rested a sea of slick undulating iron, painted with a blackness so full of shine and depth it made Harry think of an oil spill, a dark mirror. And leaning drunkenly on the surface, as though tossed by rolling waves, were strung 14 fluorescent tubes, some almost upright, some nearly spilling into the depths, all of them leaving deep white trails on the surface. Harry stared and stared and stared, and came back the next day and stared some more, and when he went home again, more than a year after that, he bought his warehouse and the first piece he made was a replica, just for himself.

Only he couldn't replicate the shine, or even close to the feeling he'd had looking at the original artwork, and in desperation he cast a spell on it, then another and another, and then ... yes. The room Harry built smelled like a sandy beach at night, like seaweed that had baked all day on rocks the earth vomited up millennia ago, like seagulls and salt and a little like the sticky smell of Coca Cola bottles left to the ants in the sun. He would stand in the center of this heady scent while the warm southern water he'd created lapped blackly around his legs, lazy southern stars spun above his head, and a cool wind lifted the hair on his arms. Best of all, lights floated above the water, casting wet trails of shine that the small waves would scramble and reassemble like code. Harry had never been to the Pacific, and so this was the Pacific of his imagination; the kind of place where a dusky figure could appear on the far side of the water and beckon him to cross.

He'd been back in the wizarding world for a year, carving out a small existence for himself as an artist. It kept him sane, touching things, shaping things, and it gave him an excuse to hide from the world, to hide from the various grand futures that had been planned for him in his absence.

After Malfoy months slid by and time after time Harry would be working in the warehouse at night, or standing letting time roll past in his private world of black water, and the hair would stand up on his arms, his skin prickle with a cold gaze. He'd turn, looking for Malfoy, but he was never there.

Instead he read about him in the lurid prose of the Prophet. The shocking story of a pure-blood wizard, released from prison, living wandless on the streets for weeks before reconciling with his family. They greedily rehashed the past; the surprise criminal charges brought against Malfoy for conspiring to murder Dumbledore. The way he'd run mad - refusing his father's lawyers, repudiating his family, refusing all help - leading inevitably to his conviction.

Two years in Azkaban. It didn't bear thinking about. Harry had spent those years roaming the world.

He knew he should be out, having fun, living life, falling in love, if not with Ginny then with someone else. Hell, just getting laid from time to time like a normal horny young guy would be good. But he couldn't, any more than he could control his strange new drive to make things with his hands.

~

The night he finished the kauri sculpture Harry waded into the black water and stood in the middle. The stars wheeled silently above his head. He sank to his knees and dug his hands into the soft sand under the water.

When the cold prickle arched up his spine it was a relief. He looked up and there, _finally,_ was a figure across the water. A thin figure, made of shadows, like in his dreams. The man walked closer and closer, his steps making the lights swirl on the surface. Harry waited, heart banging in his chest. The man's face flashed through a spill of light and Harry saw him falter, nearly dropping the wand he carried. He stood up, pulling out his own wand, and froze in his tracks. It wasn't Malfoy. It was Snape.

"Potter." A torn rasp of a voice.

Harry's heart pumped adrenalin as Snape came towards him, a look of fierce joy on his harsh face. He couldn't look away, couldn't move his feet, and Snape lunged and grabbed his arms, pulling Harry into him, ignoring both their wands.

"How is this possible? How did you survive?" Snape shook him hard, searching Harry's face for answers. Warm breath on his skin, _alive, he's alive_. Snape's fingers dug sharply into Harry's flesh. "But your bodies were found- Tell me! Is Lily, oh Merlin, Lily-"

Like the twist of a knife Harry understood. Snape thought he was James. He felt small and flat. "Snape. It's me. It's Harry Potter."

"Impossible! The Potter brat is a baby." Snape dropped Harry's arms, backing away and raising his wand. "Who are you? Answer me! Where's Lily?" His face twisted with desperate hope. "Where is Lily?"

Harry stared at him, confused. It was Snape, _Snape,_ who was, well, dead, and yet somehow not. And he looked younger. Still pale, still thin, still craggy, but his face was unlined, the deep groove between his brows and the lines around his mouth gone. He looked not much older than Harry.

"Snape, don't, don't do anything, just let me- It's me Snape, it's Harry Potter. You taught me at Hogwarts. Lily, my mum, she died a long time ago. But I know- I know you loved her."

Harry watched the wild hope fade from Snape's face. Snape dropped his arm, letting his wand dangle from his fingers.

"How?" he asked. "How do you know that!"

Harry cautiously tucked his own wand away, making sure Snape could see what he was doing.

"Er," said Harry, "because you told me."

"What in the bloody name of Merlin is going on?" Snape's face was dark with suspicion. "Who did this?"

"I don't know," said Harry. But let's not kill each other before we figure it out," He laughed nervously. "Snape, er, come and have a drink or something and we can try and sort this out."

Snape gave him a look that declared him to be an imbecile, and the sheer familiarity of it made Harry feel better. He turned to lead Snape out into the warehouse, hoping it was safe to turn his back.

There was a tiny movement, a ripple across the water. Harry looked back to check Snape and caught a flash of something out of the corner of his eye. He spun around to see Malfoy standing in the shallows.

Harry stopped in shock, his brain reeling with this new layer of weirdness. _Oh._ Malfoy looked good. His hair had grown, his clothes were clothes again, not rags, he'd put some muscle back on his bones and his face was healed, clear of bruises and blood. He gave Harry an impatient look.

"Close your mouth, Potter. And _please_ lower your wand, Snape." It was the same superior tone that had made Harry yearn to punch him countless times at school.

Harry could feel the tension coming off Snape in waves, he was on the verge of attacking. Malfoy really was a dick sometimes. Harry stepped forward to intervene.

But Malfoy must have realized how dangerous the situation was too. He dropped his casual stance, and held up his empty palms to show he wasn't armed.

"Severus, I'm Draco, Narcissa's son. This is Harry, James Potter and Lily Evan's son." Malfoy took a step closer, looking Snape in the eye. "Potter's grown up. He killed the Dark Lord. I wanted you to know that." Harry looked at Malfoy in surprise. His face was completely sincere. "I brought you here so you could see that everything you're planning to do - everything you've already done - won't be in vain."

There was a shocked silence. Snape looked back and forth between their faces, the tension strung tight between all three of them. Then he lowered his wand and rubbed his other hand over his eyes. Harry was struck again by his youth. "How do you know?" Snape asked. "How did you bring me here?"

"Just a bit of old family magic," said Malfoy, shedding his sincerity and flicking his hair out of his eyes. Harry had a feeling that was a major understatement. "And I was here once before - I saw how much power Potter had poured into this room. So I used it." _Typical,_ Harry thought.

"Is this true?" Snape asked, speaking quietly now.

Malfoy opened his mouth but Harry got in first this time. "Yes, it's true. I killed him, but you," his face felt tight, "you made it possible."

Snape stepped forward and grabbed Harry by the back of the head, tilting his face to catch the light. He looked into Snape's eyes and felt himself tumbling back in time. Snape searched his face, his stubbled chin grazing Harry's, his rough fingers turning his head, running over his cheek bones, his brow. Harry could feel Snape's heart beating against the wall of his own chest.

Snape stepped abruptly away, and Harry reeled. He could hardly breath.

"Thank you. Now send me back."

"I will, Severus," said Malfoy. "At dawn you'll go back. The spell lasts twelve hours." Harry and Snape stared at him. "In the mean time," he added brightly, "I suggest we get plastered."

~

Sometime in the early hours of the morning Malfoy had conjured a raft. The three of them lay sprawled over it, bobbing gently, hands trailing into the warm water, looking at the stars.

Harry had their latest bottle of firewhiskey balanced on his stomach. He rolled himself onto his side, clumsily bumping into Malfoy, and took a long drink. The fire burned right down his throat and he leaned over Malfoy to pass the bottle to Snape. Snape's hand snaked up, brushing his, and grabbed it by the neck.

Harry let go, vaguely watching Snape's Adam's apple bob in his long throat as he drank. He stayed up on his elbow, leaning over Malfoy. Malfoy's blonde hair lay flat on his forehead, little freckles marched over his nose. His eyebrows were crusty with dried salt from the swim they'd all taken, oh, hours ago it felt like.

Malfoy looked up at him, a lazy smile on his lips. "Oh fuck it," he said.

Snape stopped drinking and looked up. Malfoy put a hand behind Harry's head and pulled him close. He licked his own lips and Harry's mouth went dry.

"You wanna?" Malfoy whispered. He turned his head to catch Snape's eye. Snape put the bottle down. It slid into the water with a splash.

Malfoy turned to Harry again. He trailed a hand down his own chest and began undoing his belt. Snape leaned in to help, his long fingers lifting Malfoy's out of the way, and Malfoy slid his hand under Harry's shirt instead. It felt cold on Harry's stomach and he shivered, the burn in his throat fading.

Malfoy missed his lips and wetly kissed his chin, and Harry moved, tried to change the angle, and got a cheekbone in the eye. He could feel Malfoy's chest shaking with laughter, but his hand closed hard around the nape of Harry's neck.

"Be still," Malfoy ordered, and he leaned up and licked across Harry's lips. Harry's eyes closed and he followed Malfoy down, cradled his cheekbone with one hand (for safety reasons) and opened his mouth. _Oh._

When Snape took Malfoy into his mouth Harry knew, because Malfoy groaned into their kiss and his whole body arched up. Harry pushed him down and dug his hands into Malfoy's hair. Malfoy squirmed until Harry licked deep into his mouth, and all the blood in the world rushed to Harry's cock.

Malfoy moaned against his lips, and Harry shuddered and rubbed his cock helplessly against the side of Malfoy's hip. He kissed Malfoy's eyelids closed, and all over his brow, and his mouth again, hard and sweet. Then a strong hand pushed him away from Malfoy's hip, tore open his jeans and _oh god_ it was Snape's hand, Snape, working him over, harder and harder, and perfect, and he hummed into the heat of Malfoy's mouth, felt the kiss spinning out of control, felt Malfoy shaking apart underneath him, and after that it was only white heat in the darkness with the stars wheeling overhead.

Afterwards Malfoy lay under their gaze with his shirt torn over his scarred chest, his pants wide open, and his underpants pulled down under his softening cock; laid out like a feast. He rolled his head towards Snape. "Now, you," he said.

They fucked him standing against the wall, Malfoy driving his spell-slicked cock deep into Snape, and Harry, abandoned to the universe, on his knees in the water under Snape's braced arms, letting Malfoy's thrusts push Snape's cock into his mouth, over and over again.

After Malfoy came Snape dragged Harry to his feet and crushed him against the wall. He circled both their cocks in one hand and jacked them together, hard and fast, his black eyes just above Harry's, watching his face as he came. Then he framed Harry's face with his hands and kissed him, gently, thoroughly, closing Harry's eyes with his thumbs.

~

They were quiet when it was over. They put their clothes back on and spelled them dry. They went out into the warehouse where the treacherous dawn light was already seeping in.

"Why?" Snape asked.

"Because you looked after me. And because Harry looked after me."

"Will it change what happens?" asked Harry.

No one answered that. After a while, Snape said, "It's already happened."

Malfoy grinned. "Of course, the sex was an unexpected bonus."

They watched the pale light creep across the floor until a lip of sun broke through the first window. They looked at each other, black eyes, green eyes, grey eyes, all faded by the dawn.

At the last moment Malfoy spoke. "Potter, I should warn you. This may hurt."

~

Harry screamed, eyes blinded by agony, and crashed to the floor. He felt his way down his thigh to the source of the torture, and found a bloody mess, a hole the size of an orange had been gouged into his flesh.

The sound of Malfoy screaming didn't make him feel any better.

~

Leaning on his cane Harry pushed open door 182.

The scent hit him first, heady and sweet and salty. Then the dark waves with light slipping over them, the sound of water slapping against wood.

Malfoy sat on the raft, his smile a little wry, the same one Harry had watched across Platform Nine and Three-Quarters, across Hogwarts board meetings, across ceremonies, celebrations, and funerals, for what felt like most of his life.

His sculpture, this thing that had infected him, his sadness made into water and light, was thrumming with dark magic. He could feel the pull of it in his heart, the time trick Malfoy had wrought so long ago still present in the air. His leg twinged again, and he saw with savage glee that Malfoy held a cane now too, twisting it loosely in his fingers. They'd both paid a heavy price, a pound of flesh. He didn't regret it.

He walked closer and eased down onto the raft. Malfoy nudged his shoulder and passed him a shot glass.

"To Snape." They clicked glasses and drank. That familiar burn in his throat and for a second Harry thought he was back in the past. But then Malfoy turned towards him, and his handsome face was lined and heavy with age.

The ministry had moved the sculpture here. They'd pardoned Harry for owning a thing of such darkness, found a way around the law, and allowed it to be forgotten.

Only he and Malfoy came here, once a year, at dawn. They drank and talked. In the early days they'd fucked, but as the years passed it turned into something else. They talked about their wives, their children, their jobs, the pressures of being men. They laughed. Sometimes they yelled at each other and one would storm out. Sometimes they didn't speak at all.

They'd never missed a dawn. Harry wondered what compelled them so. Why his year wasn't complete until he'd sat with Malfoy on this raft in the black water, drinking firewhiskey, alone.

This year when it was time to go Malfoy stood first. He looked down at Harry, a strange light in his eyes, and then he braced his hands on Harry's shoulders and kissed him, a dry press of lips, and then he left.

When he closed the door it felt final. Harry lay back and looked at the stars for a long time before he could bring himself to go.

~

When he was able to walk without crutches, Harry was allowed to leave St. Mungo's and return to his warehouse. But he found his desire to make things, to shape things, had gone. The last piece he ever finished was the kauri. It was a strange piece, a twisted river of wood, following the grain, but fighting against it too. He thought sometimes it was a portrait of Snape.

He'd been back in his warehouse a week with nothing to do when he cracked and owled Ron. Not long after that he stopped dodging Hermione, and in the end he asked Ginny to meet him for a drink in a quiet bar in Muggle London one foggy Tuesday night.

At two am they got kicked out of the bar by its tired owner, and they stood awkwardly together in the street. Harry looked into Ginny's eyes and felt something serious well up inside him, but she grinned and ran away. He laughed and chased her up the street, and she wasn't really trying that hard because he caught her easily and pulled her into a doorway and kissed her. She choked on a breath with surprise, spluttering against his chest and laughing.

And then she pressed her body into his, thigh to chest, and kissed him back.

**Author's Note:**

> The artwork Harry sees and recreates in this story is 'Black Water' by Ralph Hotere. It was on exhibition in Kassel Germany in 1999 (not exactly the same year Harry would have been there, I've fudged it a bit).


End file.
